Sunday, 27 October 2013

More from the McAvan Chatgate saga

Linda McAvan, often dubbed "the Angel of Death" or "the most dangerous woman in Europe" for her attempts for ban or restrict the sale of electronic cigarettes as an alternative to smoking, is in more hot water.

Following from her live webchat about the subject, which was exposed as a fake both HERE and HERE , she has published a statement on her blog to try and explain the farce.

The official EU Parliament webchat was promoted as a Q & A session for people with questions about the Tobacco Products Directive and electronic cigarettes, but Linda McAvan avoided questions from members of the public in favour of soft questions that appear to have been planted by assistants.

The statement on her blog, quite frankly, just doesn't add up.

I was made aware that online forums had suggested that I had responded
to questions posted by members of staff at the European Parliament - a
fact I was unaware of at the time.

Right, so it is just complete co-incidence that genuine questions were ignored and planted questions from with the EU Parliament were answered ?

Interesting to note that if she has been made aware about what the online forums have suggested about this, then she must also be aware about what else the online forums are saying about her !

The following quote from her statement shows that she knows that she is being underhand :

however I do not respond to those who pose abusive comments

The implication being that the reason that other questions were ignored was that they contained abusive comments - if this is what she is trying to imply, then she is a liar.

Perhaps she is unaware that the EU Parliament chat app has a complete record of the entire discussion available for all to see - you need to be logged in to Facebook, but it is HERE. As well as this, several people have downloaded a copy.

THERE ARE NOT ANY ABUSIVE COMMENTS - just polite questions from real people.

So for her to say there were abusive comments, when anyone can see that there are not, can only be described as a deliberate attempt to mislead and spread false information to defend her position - a position that seems to be becoming more untenable by the week.

The problem for Linda McAvan is that she has been trying to defend the indefensible - that electronic cigarettes should be regulated as medicines, when they are not medicines. They are consumer products that if left to flourish will be able to compete with and displace tobacco cigarettes and deliver a huge public health bonus. That medicalization will stifle the products and therefore defend cigarette sales.

As her position is indefensible, she appears to be using half-truths and an element of deceit (false abusive comments claims) as the only way she can proceed.

Her final comment in her statement is

I will continue in my efforts to represent the European Parliament’s position on this issue.

Lets hope that this comment is true. The European Parliament have considered her plan to medicalise e-cigs - and rejected it.

3 comments:

"I was made aware that online forums had suggested that I had responded to questions posted by members of staff at the European Parliament - a fact I was unaware of at the time." Another outright lie from McAvan: how can someone be unaware that the person sitting next to them is feeding them questions?

This implies ignorance and stupidity of Soubry-like proportions. Is it just me or is there a trend here - perhaps we only get reps with an IQ below 85 in any area related to pharmaceutical industry profits?

She seems to be just another jobsworth who has grown comfortable with "bending the truth" in order to air her views - very much the same tactic popularised by the Alistair Campbell's of late 90's and 00's. Wonder if Labour are awake to the fact that the majority of vapers who are following this debacle will not be voting for them come election time...